IRS to Close Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program this September

On March 13, 2018, the IRS announced that the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) will be closing on September 28, 2018. This program has been in place since 2009.

In general, US persons, that is, citizens and residents of the US, must report their worldwide income on their US income tax returns. They also must report their financial accounts held outside the US on an annual FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) if the aggregate balance of their accounts exceeds $10,000.

The OVDP offers a structured program for taxpayers to amend income tax returns to report any unreported foreign income, submit any unfiled international tax filings, and disclose the existence of financial accounts outside the United States.

To participate in the OVDP, taxpayers have had to pay a substantial civil penalty based on the value of the unreported accounts, in addition to paying back taxes with a 20% penalty and interest.

The incentive to participating in the OVDP is that the IRS will not criminally prosecute the taxpayer for the failure to report his or her accounts and that all other potential civil penalties will not be assessed in lieu of the one OVDP penalty.

The OVDP is intended for those taxpayers who knew that the law required reporting of their foreign accounts but who decided to not report such accounts on an FBAR or on other international tax filings. These taxpayers have the most to gain from participating in the OVDP and remain exposed if they choose to not come into compliance.

The OVDP requires eight years of amended return filings, six years of FBAR filings, as well as several other items to be submitted to the IRS. The IRS requires a complete OVDP submission by the September 28 deadline. These submissions require time to compile the necessary documentation and to prepare amended returns. It is important for those not in compliance to decide on participating now – well before the September deadline – or you will not be able to complete the OVDP.

What options do taxpayers have if they didn’t file FBAR’s or report their foreign income but their mistakes were inadvertent? This is referred to as a “non-willful” case and is common for many taxpayers who have accounts from their home country that were opened before moving to the US or for those whose tax return preparer did not advise them as to what the tax law requires. The IRS is continuing a program known as “Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures,” for non-willful violations. These procedures, which may also require a penalty, will continue past September. There are also other ways to return to compliance.

What will IRS enforcement in this area look like once the OVDP is ended? We believe that examinations in this area will only increase. The IRS has gathered a decade’s worth of material on foreign institutions and bankers through the OVDP. This data, along with the information that the IRS now receives from many foreign countries pursuant to a law known as FATCA, allows the IRS to identify non-compliant taxpayers much more easily today than in the past. These international audits are quite intrusive and can expose taxpayers to substantial penalty. We expect the number of these audits to increase.

Once the OVDP option has ended, taxpayers will still be able to voluntarily come forward to disclose past misdeeds. (The IRS has stated that the precise details how to do so will be forthcoming.) It is clear, though, that as onerous as the OVDP penalty is now, the toll to come into compliance in the future will only be greater.